Just Like Our Life
by tabasco66
Summary: Set during 2x20 WIAWSNB but after all up to s9. Dean didn't wake up when he thought he did. Now Sam is left to help put the pieces together as Dean grapples with the fact that the last several years (plus many more down below), were a lie that spanned a mere three days. Sam is left to wonder what really happened as Dean struggles to remember what's real and what's not. Plus Bobby.


Dean was pale, too pale. A sickly shade of grey that hadn't receded at all in the time since Sam had found him strung up in that warehouse, hanging from his wrists like meat in a butchers shop window.

And there was nothing they could do but wait. Sam paced the length of the cabin for probably the hundreth time. In the next room was the sound of a phone clicking back into the cradle.

"Y'want my belt sander, boy?" Bobby asked as he walked through to join Sam and the still worryingly comatose Dean.

"Huh?" Sam muttered distractedly.

"There're faster ways to put a hole in the floor," Bobby quipped as he gestured towards Sam's feet which were still carrying him backwards and forwards across the old floorboards by Dean's bedside.

Sam continued as if Bobby hadn't spoken, long-since-disturbed plumes of dust warping and swirling in the air around him as he moved, picked out by the late-afternoon light dipping through the window.

Bobby sighed. "We got nothin'. Same as we already know, more or less."

"I need to go, need to find someone, someone can help," Sam talked quickly as he started out the room.

Bobby grabbed Sam's arm as way of stopping him and spoke with irritation thinly veiling his concern. "Go where, idjit? You're fresh-grilled fugitives, remember, you gonna go get yourself arrested, get yourself _killed_? Ain't no-one we can trust. You know your brother would do anything to protect you. You wanna help him, be here."

"It's been too long. The Djinn's gone, I killed it. I killed it," Sam spoke into his hands as they scrubbed across his face, the litany working its way past his lips for the dozenth time.

"I know, boy. He's lost a lot of blood. Takes a body a time to heal from that," Bobby spoke gruffly, though they both knew there was more to it than that.

Sam turned to look over to where Dean lay, scrutinising his brother's deathly pale face for any sign of change. Sam didn't need to check his breathing to see that Dean was still alive, since his rapid eye movements were clearly visible even from beyond his closed eyelids. Didn't need to, but checked anyway. Breathing, pulse... Sam strode over and grabbed Deans wrist, thumb on the pulse-point, just to feel the thrum of a pulse beneath his fingers. _Too cold_. He sat heavily in the chair beside Dean's bedside.

"If he's still, still in there... it's gonna be a good dream... right? A good life?" Sam asked, suddenly sounding younger than his years.

Bobby sighed. "No way to know for sure. Djinn was the one in control before. With him gone, best bet's that Deans mind'll be the one taking over. Think he'd dream up a good life for himself?"

Sam chewed on a thumbnail and looked away at a distant corner of the room as response, not willing to answer the question directly.

Bobby scrubbed a hand through his beard and looked over at Dean in thought. "Way I see it, we best hope it's bad enough to want to find a way out of."

Sam looked up at Bobby then, not quite believing the situation they'd found themselves thrust into. "Oh, God."

Bobby walked over to put a hand on Sam's shoulder but seemed to reconsider before the hand reached its destination and turned to face the wall instead. "Your dad, he's a damn idjit if ever there was one. He ain't in a good place. You boys though, you get a chance, to be in a good place. Just sometimes you gotta go through some real rough spots to get there."

Sam gritted his teeth against a surge of emotion that threatened to overtake him and looked at Dean, his brother's face paler than the sheets he lay on, dry mottled skin round his lips. Still the thought that they should be doing something wouldn't go away.

"What would you do? Tell me, what am I supposed to do?" Sam spoke towards Dean's almost lifeless form frustratedly. "Where are you? Hell, Dean-" Sam growled and kicked the bedframe.

"Ain't nothing we can do now but wait," Bobby interjected brusquely.

"Wait for what exactly?" Sam's voice raised slightly from his frustration. "Our guardian freaking angel? A divine intervention? Hell, even some goddamn _good luck_? That's not real life. There's no apple pie life waiting for us, I wish there was. Real life is we all got our hands so bloody that it's a part of us now. And that's it. Until the end."

Bobby turned towards Sam squarely, "Enough," he barked. "this ain't the end any more than I'm a horseman of the goddamn apocalypse. You boys'll get through this mess with your godforsaken souls intact or I'll die trying. And come back and haunt you. Y'hear me? We all got trials, some worse than others, but you let it eat you up from the inside and there'll be no fight left."

At this Sam's body lost its rigid posture and deflated into the chair. He looked back at Dean worriedly- rapid eye movements, breathing, pulse. Sam sighed.

"You heard the man," Sam directed towards his brother, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps Dean was hearing everything they said, if their words would filter into his subconscious even as he dreamed. Sam shook his head and breathed out heavily, then resumed his vigil watching over Dean.

…...

Sam must have fallen asleep, so he missed the moment Dean woke up. He just knows that the next time he looked at his brother, Dean was looking right at him, face still pale and expression unreadable. Sam sat up hurriedly, scrubbing a hand over his face to quickly rid the vestiges of sleep haze. He looked back and Dean was still staring, as if Sam was some kind of bizarre circus novelty. Sam lurched out the chair and dropped to his knees by Dean's bedside in one fluid movement.

"Dean? Dean? You hear me?" he whispered frantically.

Dean's eyes followed Sam's movements sluggishly, his eyes half-lidded. If Sam hadn't been mere inches away he might have missed the choked "S'mmy?"

"Yeah Dean, it's me," Sam was almost dizzy with relief.

Dean made a choked sound that must have been sore.

"Shh, don't speak," Sam warned, then cursed himself for not being more prepared. "I'll go get you a drink, hang on, uh, don't go anywhere."

Sam took off at a half jog. Tearing past Bobby in the next room, the older hunter must have been asleep too, but Sam wasn't even sorry for waking him. Quickly filling a cup from the sink, he hadn't even realised his hands were shaking. By the time he got back through though, Dean was asleep again.

…...

The next time Dean woke up, Sam was ready. He gently guided Dean up into a sitting position and helped him take a few sips of water. Dean didn't stop staring at Sam the whole time, as if puzzled and a bit shell shocked, in a way that made Sam a little anxious. When he finally spoke, it wasn't what Sam expected.

"Blast from the past," Dean smirked weakly and coughed, motioning towards Sam's head. "Shave and a haircut suits ya."

Sam frowned. He understood the distinctive brand of Dean humour- divert conversation from the fact that he narrowly escaped death again to make an unimportant flippant observation- but he wasn't making much sense. Dean diverted his eyes, then, looking down and away from Sam, and was that shame in his expression?

"How long- how long've I-" Dean muttered.

"Three days since I found you. How you feeling?" Sam asked gently. His brother was still an unpleasant shade of grey and looked too weak for Sam's own comfort.

"You found me?" Dean choked, looking up at Sam wide-eyed with a mix of expressions that he couldn't quite read. "You ain't pissed."

"Pissed?" Sam scoffed, a little puzzled. "What, that you ran after the Djinn half-cocked rather than waiting for me like I asked? Sure I'm pissed. Jerk."

"Djinn?" Dean's face was painted with 50 shades of confusion.

Sam cursed himself for not figuring that it would take Dean a little while to get his bearings right after being in whatever Djinn-induced imagination life he had for three days.

"Uh yeah, you left to go after the Djinn, that was a few days ago now..." Sam tried to explain. "I found you, strung up in that old warehouse and the blood being drained from you... you lost a lot, we weren't sure you were gonna make it and then... then you weren't waking up and we realised that whatever dream you were in you were probably still having it."

Dean stared at Sam, wide eyed. Sam hadn't thought it possible, but his face was suddenly even paler. Sam felt a little awkward under the scrutiny and looked away.

When he looked back again, Dean looked like he was about to be sick.

"Sam I'm gonna-" Dean choked, but Sam was one step ahead of him, grabbing a bucket and pushing it into Deans arms hurriedly.

Dean spluttered a little and the few sips of water he'd had splashed out again into the bucket.

"Easy, easy, I gotcha," Sam comforted, his hand on his brother's back.

Dean was visibly shaking, looking up at Sam with the same quizzical expression he'd had when he first woke up, studying his features, but now mixed with a little horror. Deans shaking hand lifted to touch his own temple, as if unsure of what he'd find there. Sam frowned a little at the gesture, not sure what it meant.

Four knocks on the front door in sharp succession. Sam heard the front door swing open then shut and lock again from the next room.

"Bobby," Sam said to Dean by way of explanation. "He set this place up for us. Just went out to get some food. You hungry?"

Sam smirked at this. Dean was always hungry. Sam knew from experience that even after losing a few pints of blood and a puking up stomach lining Dean was unlikely to turn down a cheeseburger, even if it turned out to be a horrible idea. After a momentary lack of response, however, Sam glanced at his brother to see that Dean appeared to have frozen in place, eyes wide and staring, his breath constricted in his chest.

"Dean?" Sam grabbed his brother by the shoulders ineffectively. "Dean, look at me, breathe."

Sam heard footsteps then a voice at the doorway behind him.

"Welcome back, boy. Y'had us worried there for a minute." Bobby spoke from the doorway.

Dean was staring at Bobby, still not breathing, his face a mask of shock like he'd seen a ghost.

"B-Bobby?" he gasped.

And then Dean had started breathing again, too fast, all at once, and Sam knew without having to be told that Dean's hands were grasping desperately at the mattress like that in an attempt to stop the world from spinning, and that there were probably dark spots dancing at the edge of his vision as he gasped for breath, too quick, too shallow. And that the darkness wouldn't take too long to take over.

…...

It was another three days before Dean spoke again.

He was slowly regaining a little strength and colour in his face. Still too pale for Sam's liking, but at least he was awake and moving, Sam told himself, that was something.

At first Dean had shuffled around, dazed, not quite touching anything, as if afraid the world was going to evaporate beneath his fingers like black smoke. And then he'd seemed to relax into an emotional lethargy, just observing, taking everything in, expressionless, empty.

Sam had seen Dean standing in front of the bedroom mirror staring at his reflection as if it was something new, or something long-since lost, and touching his temple in that same way he'd done before, as if he'd find something.

Sam and Bobby's attempts to hold a dialogue with Dean hadn't gotten very far, and it hadn't been until a particular conversation with Bobby that Sam had realised that there might be a little more to Dean's Djinn-induced fantasy world than they'd realised.

"He's still not talking. What do we do, what's going on, Bobby?" Sam had spoken in hushed tones, beyond earshot of his brother who was getting cleaned up in the bathroom.

Bobby sighed. "We dunno where he's been. Those three days he's been here with us but, ain't no telling where he's been in that head of his. Or how long for."

"How long-?" Sam cut himself off, wanting to kick himself for not thinking of it sooner. Dreams didn't follow any sort of linear time structure. "It could've been longer," he said mainly to himself rather than to Bobby. "Weeks? Months?"

"Hell, boy, maybe longer. And everything that could've happened in that time, or _even _in three days... and we both saw the way he reacted to me," Bobby spoke in a low tone. "He'll be ready to talk when he's ready. Best we can do til then is remind him what's up and what's down."

So Sam and Bobby had spent the next couple of days engaging in discussions about where they were, local folk legends, relaying tales of times they'd shared, both recent and not-so-recent. Bobby had asked Sam for details of hunts the brothers had been on over the last few weeks and Sam had wilfully obliged, going into as much detail as he could manage. They were careful to avoid topics that might cause Dean to retreat further.

All the while Dean, who was welcome to contribute to the discussions, chose to remain quiet, simply listening, soaking it all in. Sometimes he'd be cleaning the guns, other times he'd be feigning to read one of the heavy demon lore books Bobby had carried in from the truck, but Sam knew he was listening.

It wasn't until Bobby suggested they find somewhere different to hole up that things changed.

"We need to think about finding a different spot. We may be in the middle of nowhere, but the Impala's been sittin' out there for the best part of a week now, and it ain't exactly inconspicuous," Bobby warned.

"Yeah," Sam sighed, pushing his palms into his eye sockets in exasperation before chancing a glance over at Dean who was standing nursing a cup of coffee, still pale and drawn but finally able to stand without leaning heavily on the nearest person or piece of furniture.

Suddenly Dean spoke, low and measured. "So, what are we doing?"

Sam looked at his brother in surprise and Bobby whipped his head around to consider the hunter's first words in days.

"Oh, Bobby was just saying we should move to a new place somewhere..." Sam trailed off, not sure if he'd quite caught on to what his brother was getting at because he was sure Dean had been listening to the conversation.

"Yeah I heard," said Dean gruffly, proving Sam's suspicions. "But what are we _doing_? Now? We're always _doing _something. Never catch a break, and we're taking one now? What's the bigger picture? Who we huntin'?"

Sam was dumbfounded, of all the things he'd expected, this hadn't been one of them. Who were they hunting? Same demon they'd been hunting for the past two years, same demon their dad had been hunting since he'd been a baby. Who'd killed their mother and his girlfriend. Dean was still staring down at his coffee, his face an unreadable mix of expressions, perhaps frustration, perhaps fear, perhaps steely resignation.

Sam choked back a lump in his throat and tried to answer Dean's question with as much light-hearted nonchalance as he could muster. "Oh, y'know, same old, yellow-eyes."

Sam exchanged a hurried look with Bobby whose expression was a display of the same feelings Sam was experiencing. Bobby spoke carefully. "Well's dry, boys. No leads right now, no sense in heading out blind."

Dean just stood there staring at his coffee for a moment more, the atmospheric tension around him mounting like a snake in a can.

"Dean-" Sam probed gently, cut off by his own uncertainty of what to say.

"Just old yellow-eyes, huh," Dean's voice was still low, as he turned his back on them. "Just old yellow-eyes."

Then Dean laughed. Just ten minutes previously Sam would have thought he'd be glad for any sound to come out of Dean's mouth, but it wasn't a good sound. It was a throated drawn-out chuckle born of desperation, like Dean was aware of the sick irony of a joke that Sam and Bobby didn't quite understand.

Without warning, Dean flung the cup he was holding to the ground where it cartwheeled across the floorboards without breaking.

"Sonofabitch!" Dean roared, doubling forwards then to lean heavily on the kitchen worktop in front of him. He ground his palms into his eyes.

"Dean, what-" Sam started again.

Dean wheeled around, his teeth gritted but an unmistakeable glint shining in his eyes. "And what about Dad? Where's Dad?"

Sam and Bobby exchanged another wordless look, wide-eyed, neither man knowing what was causing this reaction or how even a Djinn-induced dream could be causing Dean to ask about the fate of the man who had been dead for months before they'd ever encountered the damn genie demon.

"Dean..." Sam started slowly, cautiously, trying to keep his voice steady. "Dad's dead."

"Yeah but where?" Dean barked. "He in Hell?"

Sam smarted. The fate of their father was a subject they usually danced around with euphemisms, too painful to put into words; he wasn't accustomed to the blunt force of the words that smacked him in the face. He looked over at Bobby helplessly.

"Yeah Dean," Bobby said carefully. "Hell ain't somewhere you get to go back from."

Dean had seemed to deflate at that, a choked sob escaping from his mouth.

"Right," is all he said.

He didn't speak again that day, but this time they welcomed the silence.

…...

A couple of days later, Sam and Dean were on the road again. Dean was driving and Sam rested his head against the cool window. Sam reached out to turn down the sound of Metallica despite Dean's mumbled protest, then looked towards his brother.

"Dean," Sam started. "How long were you living another life for?"

For a minute he thought he wasn't going to get an answer.

"A while," Dean said in a tone that warned not to push further, his lips pursed.

Sam saw that this might be the only opportunity he would get, though, and pushed on. "And you didn't know? You never realised it wasn't real?"

Dean shot Sam an irritated look but then sighed resignedly. "I thought I did. I got out, back to the real world. Or so I thought. It was just like our life- except it wasn't. I guess that was all part of the trick."

They drove a few minutes in silence and Sam assumed that was the end of the conversation, so he was surprised when Dean spoke again.

"I should've known. In all our time and all we should've learned by now? What's done is done and what's dead stays dead, and if it doesn't then we kill it. Don't let me forget that. And there ain't nobody watching out for us, just demons and ghouls and goddamn witches ready to tear us down."

Sam paused a moment in thought. "Dean," he questioned carefully. "If you didn't know it wasn't real, then how did you get out?"

Dean stiffened in the driving seat. "What is real, anyway?" he mused cryptically, before indicating to pull off at the next slip-road. "Come on now, must be some place round here does a good burger. Turn the music back up."

…...

It took a while, but eventually things seemed to get back to normal. Sam and Dean fell back into a pattern of hunting which felt almost natural and comfortable, and sometimes Sam found himself forgetting all about the incident in Joliet.

Every now and then, though, Dean would say or do something which would remind him somehow of that time, adding another piece to the puzzle. Sam sometimes wondered if he'd get the whole truth like this one day, just waiting and gathering up the pieces.

One time not long after, Dean had insisted they go to Cold Oak in South Dakota to look for yellow-eyes, apropos of nothing, and steadfastly refused to let Sam leave his side the whole time they were there. It had turned out to be a dead end.

Another time a hunt had taken them to a church in Ohio, and Sam had dangled the issue of faith, not particularly expecting Dean to bite. "I never believed, in angels and stuff," Dean had said. "But I think I must have wanted to. It was stupid, I should have known." And Sam hadn't pushed the issue.

Sometimes Sam found himself having to remind Dean to think a bit more tactically. In the past Dean had always been a good hunter, a cautious hunter, had known when to rush in and when to hold back. Seeing him lose his former caution was unnerving. Though sometimes Sam wondered if it was a self-destructive tendency driving Dean's actions, or whether sometimes there was an actual lack of understanding that if either one of them got themselves killed there was no coming back from that.

Then one time they'd investigated a rash of suicides in a small town which had, depressingly, turned out to be more incidental than supernatural in nature. Sam had caught that movement, that small movement he'd seen before as they stood above the body of a man who'd blown his own brains out, gun still held in his hand. Brain matter decorated the wall grotesquely, and half the man's face was missing on the exit side of his exit-strategy. Dean's hand fluttered up to his own temple, briefly, but Sam had seen that movement before. He suddenly knew exactly how Dean had managed to get out.


End file.
